


You loved me then, you love me now

by honeyvenom



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Coming of Age, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Richie Tozier, Slow Burn, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, Soft Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-04 16:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21200363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyvenom/pseuds/honeyvenom
Summary: In the weeks and months following that fateful summer afternoon fighting IT in the sewers, the Losers watch as the friendship between Eddie and Richie starts to slowly shift into something else.





	You loved me then, you love me now

Stan first noticed something different between Eddie and Richie a few days after they defeated the clown.

The Losers had been inseparable since they’d crawled out of the sewers together, taking a break every now and then to go home and breathe in the relief of still being alive; of having families and their old bedrooms; to settle back into the strange shape of being normal children, but they would inevitably be pulled together again. A knot that could never be untangled. Especially now, with the matching cuts still healing on their palms.

That afternoon, the one of victory and joined hands that dripped blood, Eddie had waited for Richie on the edge of the field, almost hidden by a small copse of trees. Stan spied him on his way home and stopped, confused. He’d thought they were all going their separate ways, but Eddie must have given Richie some small signal to meet him here. Stan felt a flash of pain, like the pinprick from a needle. They weren’t supposed to have their own code, they were a team. But the pain vanished as quickly as it struck. Eddie and Richie always had their own unspoken rhythms and rituals. Even before all of this. There were the Losers, and then there were the two of them. The court jester and the little prince.

After a couple of minutes Richie appeared, walking his bike over to where Eddie waited for him anxiously. Even from a distance, Stan could see the way Eddie trembled like a hummingbird, his bandaged hand cupped to his chest. 

Stan couldn’t resist edging closer. He knew snooping was wrong but he wanted to know what they were doing.

As soon as Richie reached the line of trees, a nervous smile lighting up his face, Eddie was tugging him down to the ground where he’d spilled the contents of his fanny pack onto a small blanket.

“We need to sort out your hand, it could get infected if we don’t treat the cut.”

“Eds, we just defeated a fucking killer clown that feeds on baby flesh. I don’t think a little cut’s going to be the end of us.”

“If you want to contaminate the wound with dirt on your way home and poison yourself with sepsis, then that’s fine,” Eddie snapped, his eyes glossy with anger. “But don’t come crying to me when you’re dying of organ failure.”

For once, Richie didn’t make fun of Eddie or try to crack a joke. Even though he was being ridiculous. Instead he gave a little nod, letting Eddie take his hand and press a bundle of clean tissues to the cut. But Stan got it. He knew that Eddie felt better when he was fussing over the others. That through treating Richie, he was also comforting himself. And Richie knew it too.

“We need to stem the bleeding first. Then I’ll clean the cut and put on a dressing,” Eddie said, as he applied pressure to Richie’s hand. 

Stan’s own cut throbbed in response, and he quickly tugged a hanky from the pocket of his shorts to tie around it. He couldn't help but feel a tiny prickle of annoyance that Eddie’s worry had been reserved solely for Richie. The boy who infuriated him more than anything, and whose antics often ended in Eddie hissing like a wet cat and either jumping on his back or flouncing off in a tidal wave of profanities.

“Thanks, Spaghetti,” Richie murmured. 

Eddie nodded, his eyes wide and his mouth very pink against his pale face. He looked frightened, and his hands trembled when he took the tissue away, blanching at the wet shock of crimson from Richie’s palm.

“It’s not that bad, Eddie. You know about cuts. They always look worse than they are.” 

“Since when did you become the medical expert,” Eddie groused, as he put the bloodied tissue in a ziploc bag and applied antibacterial gel to his own hands from a tube. Eddie poured water over Richie’s palm from a small bottle, patted his hand dry with another wad of tissue, and tore open a pack with a dressing inside. He pressed it to Richie's palm, then rooted around until he found a roll of bandage and a tiny pair of scissors.

"Can't believe you always keep this stuff with you, Eds. You're like a miniature Mary Poppins."

"Please shut up. I'm trying to concentrate."

Eddie had always been a live wire. Crackling with energy, snapping at the slightest provocation. And it suddenly hit Stan how gentle he was being with Richie now. The way he dabbed delicately at Richie’s cut, how his expression - usually so pinched and upset - had gone lax. He looked soft and almost relaxed, some colour blinking back into his face as he carefully rolled the bandage around Richie’s hand.

And Stan knew he should leave. There was something oddly intimate about the scene that niggled at him, made him shift from one foot to the other. But it was weirdly mesmerizing seeing Eddie and Richie like this. The boys he’d only ever seen prodding and teasing one another. Sticking out their tongues, wrestling, every encounter punctuated with an elbow to the face or a sharp kick. And Stan knew with a sudden, fierce rush of conviction that the clown had changed things between all of them. That they would never be the same again. 

Throughout Eddie’s meticulous treatment, the boys stayed silent. But Richie was looking at Eddie with an odd expression on his face. It was something Stan had seen on Richie all summer. The way his eyes would slant over to Eddie when the other boy wasn’t looking. How his face went quiet and dreamy, the only time when he wasn’t running his mouth, as he watched Eddie doing the most mundane things. Double-tying his shoelaces. Digging loose change out of a tiny purse for an ice cream. Chewing on his bottom lip as he read a comic.

It reminded Stan of something else, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He knew he’d seen that expression on someone before.

Eddie fitted the bandage with a safety pin and finally looked up with a small smile. “All done,” he said shakily, as he let go of Richie’s hand. “You’re good now.” Except it wasn't because there was a tear slowly trailing down his face, twinkling like diamond in the afternoon sun. 

“Eddie,” Richie said quietly, all nicknames gone. “What’s wrong?”

Eddie shook his head vehemently and drew in a breath, but as soon as he opened his mouth – probably to respond with something like "nothing’s wrong, jackass" – he started to cry.

“What is it?” Richie asked, eyes widening in alarm. 

“What if IT’s not gone, Richie? What if we didn’t do enough and he’s just going to come back for all of us?”

Huge tears welled up in Eddie's eyes and his hands flew up to cover his face. He started to cry into his palms, and it wasn't the kind of tears that Stan was used to, but sobs that racked Eddie’s body from his face to his legs, his entire body shaking from it.

The sound of grief, something animal and undeniable, coming from his friend broke Stan, and he almost bolted from his hiding spot to run to them. Anything to stop Eddie from crying and try to go back to how things were before. Before this fucking horrific summer had burnt them all.

Richie grabbed Eddie by the shoulders, and started shaking him gently.

“That’s bullshit, Eddie, we smoked that motherfucker. You know that, you were there. We put him in the fucking ground. IT’s never coming back.”

“But you heard Bill," Eddie gasped into his hands. "What if IT does come back and it’s even stronger than it was before? I don’t know if I can do it again, Richie, I'm not strong enough. I thought we were all going to die.” Eddie hiccuped through his tears, his throat quivering. 

“Eddie…” Richie said, his usual dopey expressions erased from shock. 

For a split second, Richie sat there staring at Eddie, the other boy lost to a spiral of panic and fear so deep Stan wondered if any of them would ever get over this. If maybe IT had won all along, and they would be lost to those sewers forever. 

But then Richie leant forward and pried Eddie’s hands away from his face. When Eddie’s face emerged it was flushed red, a mess of tears and snot. Even at his most vulnerable, when he'd broken his arm in the house on Neibolt, Eddie had never looked so desolate. 

“Listen to me,” Richie said, in a tone that Stan had never heard from him before. Stan had fallen prey to lots of Richie’s voices in the past. There was the British news anchor. The used car salesman. The manic southern belle who had lost her husband in the war. But this was different: something soft but firm that immediately slowed Eddie’s tears.

“I’m never going to let anything happen to you again,” Richie said slowly, pulling Eddie close. “I’ll never let IT hurt you. Even if he does come back. I’ll kill him myself. I’ll kill him before I ever let him put a finger on you.”

Stan stood there, speechless. He wondered absently if this was the real Richie. Like a set of Russian dolls nestled inside one another. If the Richie inside the Richie inside the Richie was this calm and confident boy. Not the loud-mouthed doofus at all.

“You won’t be able to,” Eddie said, but he didn’t try to pull away from Richie. 

“I do, and I promise. I promise I’ll protect you, Eddie. I’ll protect you always.”

And it was a vow, as sacred and true as the one the friends had just made when they stood in a ring and clasped hands. It hung in the air between the two boys, crystallized by the tremble of Eddie’s bottom lip, in the deep dark of Richie’s eyes.

Eddie had finally stopped crying, and Richie dropped his hands from Eddie’s wrists to gently brush away the tear tracks from under his eyes. Whenever Richie touched him in the past, Eddie would bat him away instantly. But Eddie just looked at Richie, wide-eyed, leaning his cheek into Richie's touch. It was completely unguarded, as if a veil had been plucked from his eyes and he was seeing Richie the first time. 

The moment was intense, charged with something Stan couldn’t describe. It brought a blush to his cheeks.

“Okay?” Richie asked, thumb still brushing gently under one of Eddie’s eyes.

“Yes,” Eddie said quietly. “Yes, Richie.”

And then he was suddenly in Richie’s arms, tucking his head under Richie’s chin to curl his body into his. Richie’s arms came around him instantly, holding him tight. They stayed like that for several minutes, breathing in one another. Stan watched as Richie rubbed small circles into Eddie’s back, murmuring something soft into his hair that Stan couldn’t hear. But from the way Eddie sniffed and nodded his head, it was something soothing. Something that made him cuddle closer, bunching his fingers into the front of Richie’s t-shirt. 

Stan left them like that, cuddling into each other under the trees. Left them to have their moment without his prying eyes looking on.

Stan didn’t think about it anymore on the way home. He picked his way across Derry, palm stinging, wanting to fall into bed for the rest of the day and stay there. It was only when he got to his front door that he realized. He knew where he’d seen that expression before. The one on Richie’s face when Eddie had been treating his hand. It was the same expression that Ben always gave Beverly when she wasn’t looking. It was a look of longing. One of adoration and devotion. It was a look someone had when they were falling in love.

The clown had changed them, Stan knew that. But maybe between Eddie and Richie most of all.

**Author's Note:**

> Like so many people, I've been fixated on Eddie and Richie since watching IT 2. One of the many fics I've been working on since then is this: a slow-drip romance seen from the eyes of the Losers Club as they watch Eddie and Richie fall in love.
> 
> Also, I went on numerous websites reading about how to treat a shallow wound, so I hope I got it right!
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed. Comments are like ambrosia to my parched mouth.


End file.
